cosecant
Americannoun
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(in a right triangle) the ratio of the hypotenuse to the side opposite a given angle.
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the secant of the complement, or the reciprocal of the sine, of a given angle or arc. csc
noun
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The ratio of the length of the hypotenuse in a right triangle to the length of the side opposite an acute angle. The cosecant is the inverse of the sine.
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The reciprocal of the ordinate of the endpoint of an arc of a unit circle centered at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system, the arc being of length x and measured counterclockwise from the point (1, 0) if x is positive or clockwise if x is negative.
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A function of a number x, equal to the cosecant of an angle whose measure in radians is equal to x.
Etymology
Origin of cosecant
First recorded in 1700–10, cosecant is from the New Latin word cosecant- (stem of cosecāns ). See co-, secant
Vocabulary lists containing cosecant
Trigonometry
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Precalculus
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Then, we can find the other trigonometric functions easily because we know that the reciprocal of sine is cosecant, the reciprocal of cosine is secant, and the reciprocal of tangent is cotangent.
From Textbooks • Dec. 1, 2021
Notice how the graph of the transformed cosecant relates to the graph of shown as the orange dashed wave.
From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015
The cosecant graph has vertical asymptotes at each value of where the sine graph crosses the x-axis; we show these in the graph below with dashed vertical lines.
From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015
Use the reciprocal relationship of the cosine and secant functions to draw the cosecant function.
From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015
Vertical and phase shifts may be applied to the cosecant function in the same way as for the secant and other functions.The equations become the following.
From Textbooks • Feb. 13, 2015
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
